Don'ts Of An Arranged Marriage

Epilogue

People speak of dreams and hallucinations. The region of deep slumber in which the illusions are so rational that they almost ascertain of it being true.

Shin-young felt the same. She had seen the handsome man in her trances. Always generous and kind, always happy.

Leaving him behind in her barren sleep was what gave her anxiety when she woke up. To her- this seems to be a new world. Bright lights, beeping monitors, and a touch from the people who observed her were so warm and real that it felt unnatural.

She was confused, she was scared. She couldn't remember how long it had been since she had been awake watching the pace and exchange words that she cannot understand.

But as the minutes passed, it came back to her. The senses in her fingers, the colors in her vision, and then the sounds in her ears. But they were too tight, sharp, and loud as her eyes tear up.

She was like a child out of a womb. Unknown to her surroundings and helpless to what was going on. She was frightened and cold, breathing heavily when they aided her to sit.

Her limbs ached, her heart rang by her ears. And her fears wept silently for a man who she had left behind in her dreams. But when minutes expired and her perception came to life she looked around frantic at the woman who had been piping calm musing to soothe her anxiety. When the female nurse rushed to Shin's service- she opened her mouth to feel and utter the one name that she seem to recall.

Nothing reverberated.

She tried again, but her throat burns with such trauma that a shocked gasp left her body. The nurse, grasping the need of the situation presented shin with a note and pen.

At first, it took shin her pathetic strength to curl her fingers by the slender body of the pen, and in a sluggishly crooked scripture, she wrote the one name she had remembered first.

A name she seem to had remembered even before her own.

The name was Lee.

                              ▪ ▪ ▪

He ran,

He trotted as he rammed into people. He ran in his soaked clothes leaving watermarks on the clean hospital floor to the dismay of janitors. But when they saw who it was, they exchanged surprised glances with their colleagues.

A community doctor who passed by them grinned, hollering the two words that the old cleaning ladies prayed for since they had met Lee two years ago and heard his story. The Lee to whom this sector was a second home. The Lee who reminded them of their sons. The Lee who became an embodiment of true love among the staffs here.

"She's awake"

These words were loudly thrown around by one to another. The remeding  patients who were new were confused. While the old helped them with the narration.

The old ones were already celebrating with hugs and cheers as they made path for a breathless, gleaming Lee to pass through. When Hwan followed tenderly- his eyes scanning the hallway. An inquisitive smile lights his ever gloomy face up as he realized-

'The son of a gun was never alone, he just had his harbor racked somewhere else'

But no assistance prepared Lee for such a reunion. When Lee tore open the door to her room he wasn't ready for it. Despite years of wishing, praying, and screaming for her to open her eyes- he wasn't in any manner orchestrated to see her.